WHO TOUCHED ME?
There is nothing more unreasonable and ungovernable than a crowd of people.
Men who standing alone or in small groups are deliberate in all they do,
lose their self-control when they come to stand in a crowd. You have
noticed this, if you have heard a cry of fire in a large assemblage, or
have seen people moving about in great excitement in some mass-meeting,
shoving, jostling and pulling at each other.
But while the Lord Jesus had been performing some wonderful works, and a
great mob of people were around Him, shoving this way and that way, all the
jostling He received evoked from Him no response.
After a while I see a wan and wasted woman pressing through the crowd. She
seems to have a very urgent errand. I can see from her countenance that she
has been a great sufferer. She comes close enough to put her finger on the
hem of Christ's garment, and the very moment she puts her finger on that
garment, Jesus says: "Who touched me?"
I would like to talk to you of the extreme sensitiveness of Jesus. It is
very often the case that those men who are mighty, have very little
fineness of feeling; but notwithstanding the fact that the Lord Jesus
Christ was the King of glory, having all power in heaven and on earth, so
soon as this sick woman comes up and puts her finger on the hem of His
garment, that moment all the feelings of His soul are aroused, and He cries
out: "Who touched me?"
I remark that poverty touches Him. The Bible says that this woman had
spent all her money on physicians; she had not got the worth of her money.
Those physicians in Oriental lands were very incompetent for their work,
and very exorbitant in their demands. You know they have a habit even to
this day in those countries of making very singular charges. Sometimes they
examine the capacity of the person to pay, and they take the entire estate.
At any rate, this woman spoken of in the text had spent her money on
physicians, and very poor physicians at that. The Lord saw her poverty and
destitution. He knew from what a miserable home she had come. He did not
ask, "Who touched me?" because He did not know; He wanted to evoke that
woman's response, and He wanted to point all the multitude to her
particular case before her cure was effected, in order that the miraculous
power might be demonstrated before all the people, and that they might be
made to believe.
In this day, as then, the touch of poverty always evokes Christ's
attention. If you be one who has had a hard struggle to get daily bread--if
the future is all dark before you--if you are harassed and perplexed, and
know not which way to turn, I want you to understand that, although in this
world there may be no sympathy for you, the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ
is immediately moved, and you have but to go to Him and touch Him with your
little finger, and you arouse all the sympathies of His infinite nature.
I also learn that sickness touches Him. She had been an invalid for twelve
years. How many sleepless nights, what loss of appetite, what nervousness,
what unrest, what pain of body, the world knew not. But when she came up
and put her finger on Christ's garment, all her suffering thrilled through
the heart of Christ instantaneously.
When we are cast down with Asiatic cholera or yellow fever, we cry to God
for pity; but in the ailments of life that continue from day to day, month
to month and year to year are you in the habit of going to Christ for
sympathy? Is it in some fell disaster alone that you call to God for mercy,
or is it in the little aches and pains of your life that you implore Him?
Don't try to carry these burdens alone. These chronic diseases are the
diseases that wear out and exhaust Christian grace, and you need to get a
new supply. Go to Him this night, if never before, with all your ailments
of body, and say: "Lord Jesus, look upon my aches and pains. In this humble
and importunate prayer I touch thee."
I remark further that the Saviour is touched with all bereavements. Perhaps
there is not a single room in your house but reminds you of some one who
has gone. You cannot look at a picture without thinking she admired that.
You cannot see a toy but you think she played with it. You cannot sit down
and put your fingers on the piano without thinking she used to handle this
instrument, and everything that is beautiful in your home is suggestive of
positive sadness.
Graves! graves! graves! It is the history of how many families to-night!
You measure your life from tear to tear, from groan to groan, from anguish
to anguish, and sometimes you feel that God has forsaken you, and you say,
"Is His mercy clean gone forever, and will He be favorable no more?"
Can it be, my afflicted friends, that you have been so foolish as to try to
carry the burden alone, when there is an almighty arm willing to be thrust
under you? Can it be that you have traveled that desert not willing to
drink of the fountains that God opened at your feet? Oh, have you not
realized the truth that Jesus is sympathetic with bereavement? Did He not
mourn at the grave of Lazarus, and will He not weep with all those who are
mourning over the dead?
You may feel faint from your bereavements, and you may not know which way
to turn, and all human solace may go for nothing; but if you would this
night with your broken heart just go one step further forward, pressing
through all the crowd of your perplexities, anxieties and sorrows, you
might with one finger move His heart, and He would say, looking upon you
with infinite comfort and compassion, "Who touched me?"
I remark that all our sins touch Him. It is generally the fact that we make
a record only of those sins which are sins of the action; but where there
is one sin of the action there are thousands of thought. Let us remember
that God puts down in His book all the iniquitous thoughts that have ever
gone through your souls. There they stand--the sins of 1820; the sins of
1825; all the sins of 1831; the sins of 1835; the sins of 1840; the sins of
1846; the sins of 1850; the sins of 1853; the sins of 1859; the sins of
1860; the sins of 1865; the sins of 1870; the sins of 1874. Oh, I can't
think of it with any degree of composure. I should fly in terror did I not
feel that those sins had been erased by the hand of my Lord Jesus
Christ--that hand which was wounded for my transgression.
The snow falls on the Alps flake by flake, and day after day, and month
after month, and after a while, at the touch of a traveler's foot, the
avalanche slides down upon the villages with terrific crash and thunder. So
the sins of our life accumulate and pile up, and after a while, unless we
are rescued by the grace of our Lord Jesus, they will come down upon our
souls in an avalanche of eternal ruin.
When we think of our sins, we are apt to think of those we have recently
committed--those sins of the past day, or the past week, or the past year;
those sins that have been in the far distance are all gone from our memory.
You can't call a half dozen of them up in your mind. But God remembers
every one of them. There is a record made of them. They will be your
overthrow unless you somehow get them out of that book.
In the great day of judgment, God will call the roll, and they will all
answer, "here!" "here!" "here!"
Oh, how they have wounded Jesus! Did He not come into this world to save
us? Have not these sins been committed against the heart and mercy of our
Lord Jesus? Sins committed against us by an enemy we can stand; but by a
friend, how hard it is to bear! Have we not wounded the Lord Jesus Christ
in the house of His friends?
Since we stood up in the presence of the great congregation and attested
our love for Christ and said from this time we will serve the Lord, have we
not all been recreant? Have we not gone astray like lost sheep, and there
is no health in us? Oh, they touch Christ; they have touched Him on the
tenderest spot of His heart.
Let us bemoan this treatment of our best friend. It seems to me Christ was
never so lovely as He is now--the chief among ten thousand and the one
altogether lovely. Why can't you come and put your trust in Him? He is an
infinite Saviour. He can take all the iniquities of your life and cast them
behind His back. Blessed is the man who has obtained His forgiveness, and
whose sins are covered!
End of Project Gutenberg's Around The Tea-Table, by T. De Witt Talmage